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Windows Update "select updates to install" screen is blank

Question

I'm using Windows 7 x64 (final RTM build). A few days ago I've started to have problems with the Windows Update control panel. It doesn't show me the description of the updates I've downloaded. It's very annoying!

Please ensure that you logon with administrator when checking updates. If the issue perststs, please also create a new user account which has Administrator previlliage and run Windows Update again with it to see how it works.

Please ensure that you logon with administrator when checking updates. If the issue perststs, please also create a new user account which has Administrator previlliage and run Windows Update again with it to see how it works.

I'm getting the same thing, but on Vista Home Premium with SP2 installed. I currently have 14 important and 6 optional things to install and I can't see any of them, just like the original posters picture.

It didn't work in my case (tried both "normal" and "aggressive" settings and doing manually what the "Fix It" does). In my case restarting explorer.exe process resolves the problem. The issue seems to occur after the computer was running for some time
(for example PC was put to sleep instead of being shut down for the night, the user never logs off).

When Windows Update reports new updates (for example the Windows Defender definition update) for the first time after startup (or explorer.exe restart) the update details are displayed correctly. The issue seems to occur the next time.

To make matters "interesting" the issue also occurs on yet antoher two completely different laptops Windows Vista. One of them was a "clean install" and within the very same day the issue started to appear (also with Microsoft Update enabled). The only thing
those systems have in common are: Adobe Acrobat 9, QuickTime and MS Office 2003 or 2007 installed.

It is natural that the Windows Update screen looks fine after applying the "FixIt" because it requires a reboot (which naturally restarts explorer.exe). After that everything works fine for some time. And then the issue occurs again.

So that would mean that after extended period of usage (or after checking for Windows Updates multiple times) either Windows shell (explorer.exe) or it's module (C:\Windows\system32\wucltux.dll) is doing something nobody really expected it to do.

And that's not really that annoying with the exception that it just might mean that explorer.exe is starting to behave weird (hopefully in regards to Windows Update listing only) after extended period of running.

I am running an administrator account and see 12 important and 3 optional updates. but the list is empty when I click on it. I also tried to run the hotfix, but that just makes windows reboot afterwards and then the issue is gone.

You can 'fix' this without the reboot by killing explorer.exe and restarting it!

I had the same problem using Windows 8.1 after running many hours. I saw your suggestion about the process explorer.exe and I solved simply logging OUT and IN again (stopping unneeded processes) and
the details were displayed correctly. Thanks!